Masa of Echo Park server Zed Cutsinger with a Papa Leo deep-dish (photo by Pablo Goldstein)
DEEP DISH PIZZA IS a Midwestern delicacy. More pie than pizza, the average deep-dish is 2 inches tall, packed with meat and veggies, covered in mozzarella and topped with a thick slathering of tomato sauce. It’s not something you fold up and eat with your hands like a classic New York slice. This is a fork-and-knife situation.
It’s also incredibly hard to burn, because of its gargantuan, moisture-laden composition. A tavern-style pizza — the other style of pizza Chicago made famous — can easily burn to a crisp if a chef goes on an extra-long cigarette break. But a deep-dish pizza loaded with gooey cheese and fatty sausage and especially the wet tomato sauce which, in defiance of traditional pizza preparation, is poured on top of everything? To burn a deep-dish pizza, you really have to try.
Or you can just type “make this pizza look burnt” into your generative AI chatbot of choice.
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